James Kirkup is The Telegraph's Executive Editor (Politics). He was previously the Telegraph's Political Editor and has worked at Westminster since 2001.

Sgt Danny Nightingale: what were the SAS doing in Lebanon in 2006?

SAS Sergeant Danny Nightingale’s detention in a military cell in Colchester has excited a lot of interest. His detention arises from his possession of a 9mm pistol and several hundred rounds, kept in insecure conditions.

Keeping weapons improperly is a serious business, and Sgt Nightingale's individual case is an emotive one. But I wonder if this case is in danger of revealing some other information which could have consequences beyond a single individual.

Sgt Nightingale’s wife, Sally, has fought hard for husband’s release. Part of her campaign has involved raising public awareness of the case. Today, she has given an interview to the Daily Mail.

In 2001, he applied to go on the notoriously tough SAS recruiting course — and passed. He was now part of a regiment whose members are famed for their courage and bravery as well as their powers of physical and mental endurance.

Four years later, the couple began going out together. They married the following year and Mara was born in 2007. ‘We’d been friends for a long time but led our own lives. But once we got together we decided quite quickly to get married,’ says Mrs Nightingale.

With Danny away on active service a lot, the family settled in Crewe so that Sally could be close to her family. ‘As soon as we got back from our honeymoon in the Maldives, Danny had to go off to Lebanon.

‘He has served in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Lebanon, but a lot of the time I had no idea where he was or what he was doing because it is confidential. He would do a six-month tour of duty every two years.

If the chronology set out here is accurate, Sgt Danny Nightingale, a British Special Forces soldier, was deployed to Lebanon in 2006, possibly for as long as six months.

Now, this sort of thing is rather outside my limited knowledge of matters military, but I don’t recall any previous suggestion that British forces were anywhere near Lebanon at the time. Obviously, I’m happy to be corrected if anyone is aware of previous reports to that effect.

Readers may recall that Tony Blair backed Israel in that 2006 conflict, a decision he has since said “probably did me more damage than anything since Iraq.”

Indeed, Mr Blair has written in his autobiography, his stance on the Lebanon conflict effectively ended his premiership: Labour MPs, already uneasy about him, united in anger to demand a clear timetable for his departure.

Both Mr Blair and the SAS give rise to numerous conspiracy theories, few of them justified by the facts. But the suggestion that the SAS were in Lebanon around the time of Israel’s hugely controversial war is intriguing, to say the least.

UPDATE: Twitter is a marvellous thing. Within not very many minutes of this post going live, several people have kindly offered answers to the question in my headline. Several of them have pointed to reports in 2006, including this one, suggesting that UK Special Forces troops were in Lebanon to carry out the extraction of British nationals from dangerous areas. Others have suggested that such soldiers are routinely used to protect British diplomats and other UK officials working in such areas. I am grateful for all answers, and shall do my best to update with more insights that arrive.

UPDATE 2: Yup, someone who was in the MoD at the time and in a position to know tells me that UK SF were involved in both evacuation and diplomatic protection work in Lebanon at the time. I am grateful to him, and all others who have jogged my (evidently failing) memory.